Big Girl Bed

A couple of weeks ago, in a fit of desperation, we bought a toddler bed for Natalia. It had never been the plan to purchase yet another cheap, plastic bed. The Plan had been to buy Ree and Natalia bunk beds when Natalia was two and ready to move out of the crib and into a "big girl" bed.

But Natalia is not much of a fan of other people's plans, and we are still working on getting her to move into the crib. She will nap there. And there was that one time, when there was a hurricane outside making lots of noise, that she slept there. But that's about it.

She's only 16 months, but since she has pretty much only slept in a bed since her bassinet/baby swing days, we thought we would give it a whirl. After a quick internet search we determined that the Toys R Us in town had beds in stock but they were overpriced (no real surprise there). Kmart carries them, but according to the website the local store's were out of stock. Target.com informed us the local store does not carry them, but we could order one online and if we used our Target debit card we got 5% off and free shipping. We had a winner.

When the bed finally arrived, the kids were so excited to see it. You would've thought it was a present for all of them. The box had a picture of the assembled bed, and Natalia kept hugging the box and pretending to sleep on it. I took this as a good sign. (I also have an unfortunate habit of being an eternal optimist.)

Jeff put the bed together the next night. He assembled it in the living room, and the kids were beside themselves and had to be repeatedly reminded to stand back and to sit down on the rug (rather than running laps around Jeff.)

When the bed was assembled, Natalia ran to get her blankie and stuffed animals. At bedtime, we moved it into our room. (After much discussion, we figured we would let her sleep there in her bed before attempting to move her in with her siblings.) As soon as the bed was in place, she laid down and pretended to sleep.

Then she realized I was serious about her going to bed, and she freaked out. We still had the nightly royal rumble. This one did not end with her sleeping in the crib. This time she was so traumatized she ended up sleeping in our bed.

On the bright side, we upgraded our bed about 6 weeks ago, and now we at least have a queen sized mattress (we previously had been squished onto a very sad full sized mattress) for the three of us to share. How romantic!